Lucky
by 13th Dead End
Summary: Kutner got lucky then, but even an unsuccessful suicide has the power to throw lives out of balance. HxW,TxK,Cx13
1. Chapter 1

Speculation fic I've had in my mind for a while, for all of us who miss Kutner~. He lives on in this story! This story will be slashy later on. There will be some Cameron/Thirteen hinting, but I'm not sure if it will go in that direction entirely. Kutner/Taub will eventually evolve, and of course, we have the classic House/Wilson guaranteed.

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"Kutner!" Thirteen called, pressing her ear to the door and rapping her knuckles against the dark wood. "Kutner, it's Foreman and Thirteen," Foreman tried, knocking a little louder and raising his voice to a yell. The apartment was still silent. Thirteen sighed and rolled her eyes, withdrawing a key from her pocket and dangling it before Foreman's eyes. "House gave me these. Let's just let ourselves in." She easily opened the door and swung it open. The inside of Kutner's apartment was dark, but through the afternoon light coming through the draped windows they could clearly see the neatly stacked shelves of comic books and action figures. Thirteen couldn't help but walk in and grin widely.

"A man-boy paradise," she exclaimed, running a finger along a glass display case. Everything was perfect in the apartment; it looked recently cleaned, even. Odd. Thirteen slipped off into thought, while Foreman shuffled off to see if Kutner was in the kitchen without a word. A shape out of place caught Thirteen's eye. She could see it in the corner of her vision; as she turned around to further inspect it, she could feel her heart stop and drop a few inches. "Oh god," she gasped, "Kutner!" She shot off towards the bedroom, and felt her shoes squelch into a pool of blood as soon as she crossed the threshhold. Kutner was sprawled on his back in the congealing blood, a small circle-shaped wound on his temple. Thirteen fell to her knees beside him, barely hearing Foreman drop everything in the kitchen and come into the room. She took two seconds to coach herself to stay calm and check the vitals, took a breath, and pressed her ear to Kutner's chest. Hearing nothing, she pressed two shaking fingers against his throat, grappling desperately to find a sign.

It was there. Extremely faint, but it was there. Her heart jumped again. "Eric! He has a pulse, call for an ambulance-" Foreman was already calling for one before she finished talking.

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When the ambulance arrived at Princeton-Plainsboro emergency bay, they'd managed to get Kutner's heart beating a little faster with drugs, three defibrillator shocks, and at least 10 minutes of Thirteen and Foreman's initial CPR. Sure, he was breathing and pumping his own blood for now, but his head was still bleeding everywhere. The EMS attendant in the ambulance kept an ice pack and gauze pressed to his head until it soaked through, and she had to change it. The ambulance screeched to a stop, Foreman and Thirteen chasing after the emergency room workers pushing the stretcher. Cameron had been reviewing her files (actually quite bored, there weren't many emergency room patients at the moment) when she noticed the two rush in, flushed and bloodied. She dropped the file immediately, coming up to Thirteen.

"What happened?" She asked, but the other woman just put her hands over her face and stopped in her tracks before Kutner's bed. Her shoulders started to shake; obviously she had managed to hold it all in until now. Always the stonger man, Foreman was assisting the doctors in asessing his friend's vitals without giving into shock.

"I don't know," Thirteen croaked, wiping her eyes, but still unmoving. Makeup smeared at the corners of her eyes as she did so. She felt rooted to the spot, unable to do anything. Cameron's easy-access heart was already touched, and she put her hand on Thirteen's shoulder gently. "Come, sit down. He's got enough doctors attending, just relax." She led Thirteen away and gently sat her down in one of the plastic waiting room chairs, handing her a cup of water from the cooler nearby. Thirteen brushed her hair out of her face, calming herself down and taking the water offered, but not drinking it.

"I think he shot himself. The gun was in his hand and there was... blood everywhere." She glanced down at the dark stains on her pants, taking a gulp of water. "Right temple. Bullet wound. We don't know how far he shot himself from or the bullet's trajectory. Only... only something like five to ten percent of these injuries are survived, and even if he survives, he could be impaired..." She pressed her lips together and looked down, reluctant to cry again.

"It's not the end." Cameron said softly, sitting down beside her and putting a hand on her shoulder again. "There is that five-ten percent who survive, and there's also a percent that walk away from it and continue thei lives. We all know Kutner's exceptional. We're going to do everything." She squeezed Thirteen's shoulder gently, and the woman smiled weakly and nodded.

"Yeah..." was all she could add.

"Ready to go back? I paged House, he should be there already." Thirteen nodded again, and followed Cameron back into the emergency room.

Sure enough, House, followed by Taub, had just entered when the two girls re-entered. Taub's face was sickly pale, and his jaw dropped a little as soon as he saw the group of nurses huddled around Kutner's bed and the other two blood-spattered members of the team. House's face was blank, as his face always was when faced with the most terrible of situations, but he limped to the group as fast as he could.

"Bring me up to speed," he barked. Foreman stepped in immediately.

"Gunshot wound to the right temple. The wound is fairly small, the gun was small calibre. He had a faint pulse and wasn't breathing when we found him, but even that is lucky for a head injury victim; his heartbeat's back, and he's on a respirator. We need a CT soon, find out where the bullet is-"

"The bleeding?"

"It's being controlled for now."

"Mmmmhm." House rocked back and forth on his heels, pursing his lips and staring at Kutner's still body. "Shots across the brain have bleaker chances. They hit both hemispheres of the brain instead of one and cut up a lot of really good stuff."

"We don't know if it hit he other side of the brain until we get a CT!" Foreman insisted.

Miraculously, House nodded. "Keep him stable. Get him up to radiology for a CT. Cameron moved away from Thirteen to assist the nurses in beginning to move the bed; Thirteen followed Foreman as he ran ahead to radiology. Taub was still standing in the same spot, swallowing thickly. There was a lump in his throat he refused to acknowledge. House was still standing there, so he didn't exactly rush to his best friend's bedside, but his thoughts rushed around his head restlessly - the respirator mask stretched over Kutner's face, the bloodied gauze wrapped around his head, obscuring his eyes, it was... too much. He turned away abruptly and left to follow Thirteen and Foreman.

House raised an eyebrow, tapped his cane on the floor, made a face, and followed Cameron calmly.

-----

"We have bleeding in the brain that should be drained," Foreman kindly stated the obvious for them in the CT room, watching images come up on the screen. A white fleck and a few smaller white flecks appeared around the entry wound.

Taub pressed his finger to the screen, like that would help anything. "The.. bullet. And the smaller shards must be shrapnel."

"Oh god." Thirteen put her hand over her mouth, turning her eyes away again. She felt like she might be sick.

"No, no, it's only entered the right hemisphere of the the brain." Foreman said incredulously, leaning in to see if he might be wrong.

"Are you serious?" Taub added, sounding equally surprised. "Those must have been some old, tiny bullets, or maybe Kutner just doesn't know how to shoot a gun right... anyway, this is a good sign, as good as it could be; damage to one side of the brain only-"

"Could still leave him a vegetable for the rest of his life, however long that'll be!" House barged in with his rude sing-song voice. "Frontal lobe. Lots of good stuff going on in there that would be a shame to lose. Like motor function, speech, sensory loss-"

"House! Shut the hell up!" Taub snapped, turning to him, features furious, but the look was mitigated by the glistening of his eyes that he was keeping well under control. Well, not under control enough for House not to notice.

"No I will _not_ shut the hell up-" House raised his voice over Taub's, "-get him into surgery now, drain the blood, and carve up some skull to lessen intercranial pressure before-" Before House even finished talking, bleeping erupted from monitors as the deathly still body in the CT machine came alive with convulsions. "-that happens." The rest of the team shot up to their feet to stop the seizure; one wrong move and he could go into arrest again, or start bleeding more.

"Angels, do what I say and take him to Chase, _now._" House told them over the intercom, very serious now, and limped towards the exit.

"Where are you going?" Thirteen cried, both hands holding down Kutner's convulsing body as Taub struggled to inject anti-convulsants (a bit difficult when both his hands and the other man's whole body were shaking).

"Wilson." House answered simply, and he was gone.

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R&R is loved~ Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

Sorry if my medi-babble isn't entirely accurate, guys. I wrote a chunk of this while being distracted in school. Enjoy!

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"House swung open the door to Wilson's office, making the oncologist look up. House didn't say anything immediately, sitting down in the chair in front of Wilson's desk and passing his cane from hand to hand.

"Yes?" Wilson tried. "Need a consult?"

"Nope. Patient is stable, but we still haven't figured out the case."

"Then?"

".... Kutner tried to kill himself." Wilson's eyebrows shot up.

"What?" He said incredulously. "House, if this is a joke-"

"No joke. Thirteen and Kutner just got him into the ER half an hour ago. He's in surgery now."

"They found him alive after a shot to the head?"

"Temple. The bullet's in his frontal lobe right now, must have shifted during his CT and caused more bleeding and provoked a seizure."

Wilson nodded slowly to himself. "But he's still breathing, heart's beating... the biggest problem with gunshot wounds to the head is the brainstem - if it's hit, he can't perform involuntary functions, but this is good-"

"Don't say it's good." House snapped. "He could still be braindead, they're probably assessing the coma in surgery prep right now."

"Gage had an iron rod shoved through his frontal lobe and walked away from it. Miracles happen." Wilson raised his hands in a 'you never know' gesture.

"Gage had seizures a few years later and died of it."

"Still, would you rather have Kutner dead now, or sometime in the future? You're the one who's always telling us we're going to die one day, and you seem to take special pleasure in reminding Thirteen of that-"

"Gage was a completely different person after the hit to the temporal lobe. Made people back then theorize it controlled a big part of personality." House looked up at Wilson. His face was expressionless, but Wilson was a well-trained House observer; he could detect a glimmer of sadness in the diagnostician's blue eyes.

"I'm not ready to hire a Kutner version 2.0. In fact, there's no guarantee Kutner 2.0 will even be able to solve problems or hold his hands straight, if he wakes up." House put his face in his hands, rubbing his eyes and heaving a deep sigh. "Whatever happens, I've lost a team member."

Wilson tilted his head, and House stared at him. The former then shook his head, getting up and moving towards the door. Before exiting, he put a hand on House's shoulder.

"He'll make it. Are you going to come with me and go criticize his surgeons or not?"

House hesitated only a moment. "Yeah."

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"Is there any chance of removing the bullet?" Thirteen asked Chase over the intercom from the viewing room. She had a hand on the`glass pane, eyes fixed on the screen. Cameron was also standing behind her, watching. Foreman and Chase were operating, and Taub was simply nowhere to be found, not that anyone noticed this.

"Of course not," Chase replied, checking the position of the drain that had been placed inside the hole in the`skull and readjusting it with bloodied gloves. "Removing the bullet could cause a massive bleed or more tissue damage. The bullet is staying in, we're going to drain the bleed first."

House and Wilson entered the viewing room, and Thirteen barely noticed them. House settled down into his chair and stared intently at Chase and Foreman.

"How is it?" Wilson asked Cameron.

"So good so far," she nodded. "They're almost done with controlling the bleeding; they gave him a paralytic so it can drain easier, but it's also going to stop seizures for now."

"How was the coma, when he came in?"

"Um.."

"Patient recovery rates from these types of wounds usually get better if they weren't in a deep coma."

"Responses to pain, responsive pupils. No motion, no speech, though." Cameron glanced up at one of the displays. "We do have brain activity, though. So he's definately not brain dead."

The two fell silent, and simply watched.

"Chase," House spoke up. "You've got the bleeding under control. Don't focus on it so much, but do put another hole in his skull, would you?"

Thirteen snapped back into the realm of the viewing room, staring wide-eyed at her boss.

"His brain is still swelling, and needs some room until it goes down."

Chase stared at House before shrugging. Foreman rolled his eyes. "Makes sense, of course," Chase said resignedly, and asked an assistant to hand him the drill. Thirteen chewed on a fingernail. She looked like a nervous wreck, but in fact, she was the only one letting it show on the outside. Though Foreman's face was covered by the surgical mask, and his eyes were focused on the path Chase was making with the drill, inside, he couldn't believe he was doing. Assisting a possibly futile surgery to save a man who had wanted to die.

House's pager beeped violently at that moment, making Cameron jump. He pulled it from his blazer pocket and blinked at it.

"Taub... something about the patient." Everyone in the room stared incredulously; obviously all of them had forgotten they currently had two patients, Kutner and that man and his wife. Oh yeah.

"Cool. I wonder what he's doing there at a time like this." House said to himself, getting up and leaving. Wilson moved to follow him, then stopped, opened his mouth to say something, closed it, and stayed in the viewing room.

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Taub was standing in House's office. When the older doctor limped in, he held out a folder of papers, stating in a businesslike tone; "No Wegner's, everything's normal. I don't know what fits, none of your theories-"

"What are you doing here?"

"Uh - giving you the results on the tests you ordered-"

"Not that, why aren't you holding your dear best friend's hand in the OR right now?"

Taub looked sideways, feigning exasperation. "He wanted to die. He was an idiot not to talk to any of us. I'm not expressly needed there, so let this thing take it's course."

House raised an eyebrow, snatching the files from him and throwing them down on his desk without looking at them. Everything about Taub screamed 'I'm pissed off,' but House didn't buy it.

"Don't pretend your head is a level above everyone else's and go hold Thirteen's hand."

"No." Taub answered simply. House looked taken aback at being... refused. "She has Cameron there for her. Chase has our best neurosurgeon. And our patient, who is supposed to be having the best diagnostician in the country, is sitting there. So will you please help the patient who has a bigger chance of survival?"

House pondered that a moment, then got back up, snatching up his cane and heading out the door. "Only for you, Tiny, only this time."


	3. Chapter 3

Thank you all so much for the lovely reviews, faves, and alerts so far. Sorry this took so long!

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Thirteen had regained her composure, slowly but surely. Chase and Foreman had successfully stopped the bleeding and the brain swelling had gone down, so they were closing up Kutner's head. Wilson had already gone to find House by then, but Cameron was sticking around. Her huge heart felt so much compassion for everyone she barely realized how worried she was herself. Thirteen bolted from the viewing room without a word, and Cameron followed.

She caught up to the other woman in the bathroom. Thirteen was washing her face calmly, pulling back flyaway hair. The red around her eyes was beginning to recede, and she tried on a small smile in the mirror.

"Are you-"

"I'm fine now. Thanks." She replied shortly, straightening her lab coat. "Everything went well. We might just have this under control."

Positive thinking from Thirteen? Cameron nodded encouragingly.

"I'll come visit him when they get him settled in a room." She dried off her hands and headed out the door. "But really - thanks for being encouraging." She smiled thinly, and was gone. Cameron waited a few seconds, just so she wouldn't seem like a stalker, then left herself.

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When Thirteen entered the conference room, it was empty. Everyone's things were just where they had been left this morning - the sky outside the floor-to-ceiling windows was becoming darker, the beginning mist of rain spattering the windows. She calmly made her way to the coffee pot and began to make herself her usual decaf when she heard the murmur of voices from House's office next door. Peering through the small cracks in the closed blinds, she could see House and Taub talking- well, arguing, probably, by the tones of their voices.

"I want to run an echo to check-"

"Oh, you're _heartless_." House scoffed.

"Heartless because I want to find out why our ailing patient is ailing?"

"No, because you haven't bothered to see Kutner past the time you glimpsed him in the ER."

"Oh, yes, House. Like you're the compassionate one who's going to spend your nights by his bed, nursing him better."

"No. Because Kutner's not my best friend."

"What if it was Wilson who tried to kill himself?"

"I'd be doing what I am now." Thirteen could hear the thump of a cane and House pushing back his chair, getting up. Then came a small pop, and then the squeal of a marker against plastic. The whiteboard was in the conference room, so House was probably writing on the lightbox in his office.

"Trying to find a reason. Why, Kutner? Money? Love? Jealousy?"

"Forget it." Taub sighed. "I don't care about this. I'm going to go test the patient, and by the way, if Wilson tried to kill himself, I bet you would be pissed too." He left, and Thirteen watched him saunter towards the elevator from her corner. House plopped back down into his chair, passing one of the bouncy balls on his desk from one hand to the other in thought.

Thirteen drew breath, and entered his office through the side door. Indeed, there was a list of 'causes' written on the lightbox.

"Um-" She began, but House cut her off.

"Tiny is busy with the husband. You go get the wife her MRI."

Thirteen's eyebrows arched. "You want me to-"

"Yes, because as much as Taub wants to stay away from Kutner, he's too slow and too alone to do the tests himself~. Besides, it might be better if you keep your hands busy. Crying constantly gives you wrinkles." Thirteen shrugged, and glanced at her beeping pager.

"Kutner's out of surgery and settled in his room. Foreman's on his way up." She ignored the command for an MRI and returned to the conference room, House limping after her. He didn't argue, however, and wiped the patient's symptoms off their white board.

"Why did you- what is that?" Thirteen squinted at what House had begun to write.

Foreman entered, still dressed in scrubs and looking exhausted.

"He's in his room, still deep in a coma. He's not brain dead though, for sure." Foreman shrugged. "There's just no way to know what is going to happen for here on."

Thirteen left without a word, not heading for Radiology but for the intensive care unit.

"What are you writing?" Foreman asked, trying to ignore the fact his girlfriend had just brushed right past him as if he wasn't there.

"Just a few things we can expect. Why don't you help me out? You're the brain man." House stepped away from the white board. He had written a few bullet points: _Impaired motor function, personality change, seizures_.

"You mean.. what are the after effects of frontal lobe injury? Modern science doesn't even known half of them. Diminished or increased sexual function, diminished capability to solve problems, slower thinking..." House added the rest fervently to the board.

"I'm surprised."

House raised an eyebrow.

"You're concerned."

"Am not." House frowned.

"You're actually worrying what's going to happen to him."

House snorted. "I'm curious. Headshots are so cool."

"You're worried, scared, and shocked that you couldn't predict this - so now you're going to freak out trying to fix it."

"Yeah, yeah, go help Thirteen with whatever she's doing." House glared and shooed him out with a swing of his cane.


End file.
